News & Events

The Sister Rose Thering Fund at Seton Hall University announces that
educators can now apply for one of 20 scholarships to teach Holocaust
and Jewish-Christian studies in public, private, or parochial schools.
The fund supports students, both matriculating and non-matriculating, to
attend the graduate program of Jewish-Christian Studies in the
Department of Religion in the College of Arts and Sciences, which offers
a comprehensive curriculum leading to the Master of Arts (M.A.) in
Jewish-Christian Studies, as well as a Certificate in Jewish-Christian
Studies.

The Fund for Jewish Christian Studies, through the vision and
aspirations of the late Sister Rose Thering, prides itself on the
incorporation of Holocaust-related studies, and its goal is to help
educators explore lessons of lasting social significance and counter the
destructive power of prejudice and anti-Semitism. The New Jersey State
Legislature mandates teaching about the Holocaust and genocide in every
school in the state, grades K-12, signed into law by former Governor
Christine Todd Whitman and effective April of 1994. The legislature not
only created a great importance for teachers to broaden their expertise
on such an intimate and historically desolate time in world history, but
prompted institutes of higher learning to take action as well.

The late Sister Rose Thering, a woman dedicated to the progression of
Jewish-Christian Studies, abolishing anti-Semitism and continuing
education for teachers, serves as the namesake and visionary to the
Sister Rose Thering Fund at Seton Hall University. The fund provides
tuition assistance to more than 40 teachers annually.

David Bossman, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Sister Rose Thering
Fund urged the usefulness and importance of these courses, discussed one
such offering, Lessons from the Holocaust: “In our day when antisocial
behavior eats away at the fabric of our communities, the course Lessons
from the Holocaust is particularly useful for equipping teachers with
the tools to educate citizens in an awareness of personal rights and
responsibilities. The dignity of the person, once lost by bullying,
targeting and exploiting, cripples individuals and debilitates us all.
Education is a social investment for building a functional society,” Dr.
Bossman explained.

The late Sister Rose’s words exemplify the ambitions of the program,
and the ethics behind the curriculum: “I know the power of teachers. It
is my deepest wish that teachers in our public and parochial schools,
with scholarship assistance, will be able to enroll in Jewish-Christian
studies at Seton Hall University to stem the tide of ignorance in our
schools and in society.”